Admission to the performances costs $8, and a food cart on the premises serves up either German flatbread sandwiches or barbecue. Two carts alternatively are on-site, one of which is Black Forest Flammkuchen Co., founded by two recent Culinary Arts Institute graduates.
Henderson isn’t just booking acts; he’s also sending out a weekly e-mail that describes each group in detail. This marketing effort is key in getting out the word. (If you want to get on the list, e-mail [email protected].) “We’re creating a buzz,” said Henderson, who lives in Phoenicia with his family but talks about possibly moving to Kingston. “We want to see artists locally and from afield come in at the ground level.”
The idea for a Kingston Festival of the Arts actually grew out of an anti-fracking concert that his partner in the venture, Gloria Waslyn, wanted to host, which would celebrate clean water. (Waslyn, who also resides in Phoenicia, hosts Parrots for Peace: four blue-and-gold macaws – she calls them “avian activists” – who attend various festivals and environmental-themed events to promote the cause of peace and a safe environment.) The concert evolved into a whole day of events, which we’ll write about when we get closer to the date, August 24.
“I’ve traveled around the world a lot and seen how festivals revive cities,” said Henderson, a native of New Zealand who got his start at the Australian Opera in Sydney. The industrial environs of Kingston are ripe with possibilities, he added. “If you can think out of the box, there are so many fascinating spaces just waiting to be filled with art.”
One such place is the abandoned brickyard. “It’s East-Berlin-meets-the-Hudson-River-painters,” he said, noting that he encountered skateboarders as well as walls of graffiti on a recent visit to the site. “It’s perfect for cutting-edge performances, and has access to both the water and the road. It could be like MASS MoCA. It’s something living and creative.”
Since he was a teenager, opera has been his first love, but Henderson has always been interested in experimentation and exploring other genres and artforms. Growing up in Christchurch, New Zealand was like being in a bygone century, with its active singing culture and wool trade. As a student at a Presbyterian Scottish boys’ school, he excelled at the bagpipes and took private voice lessons. Henderson also made his own movies as a teenager and won First Place in a national televised film contest – an honor that he shared with the equally young Peter Jackson, future director of Lord of the Rings.
In his early twenties he had achieved his dream of singing major roles with Opera Australia, performing with such greats as Joan Sutherland. He also founded his own chamber opera company, getting lots of press for his performances, which included avant-garde operas The Golem and De Profundis, based on Oscar Wilde’s letters to Lord Alfred Douglas when he was in jail. The company’s productions incorporated film, dance and other media and were performed in a tiny theater in a working-class, multi-ethnic area of Sydney.
Henderson traveled to Europe, learning German at the Goethe Institute in Munich and performing in London, where he met his wife Bex, an actress and singer. After the couple moved to New York City in 2002, Henderson sang with orchestras all over the US and performed in operas overseas. In 2003 he and Bex moved to the mid-Hudson Valley full-time, eventually having two children and settling in Phoenicia.
Henderson said that someday he would like to launch a chamber opera company in Kingston, which would present rarely performed works and offer professional young singers plum roles. In the meantime, he’s busy putting together the August 24 festival, which he hopes to expand to 11 days in 2014.
A particular inspiration was the Spoleto Festival in Melbourne, where he had his first professional job as a soloist. Though this was over two decades ago, the thrill of that event has stayed with him. “It was so frigging exciting,” he recalls. “It wasn’t just one event, but many events happening simultaneously – from street performances down by the waterfront to a gigantic opera to a cutting-edge performance in a black-box theater to a restaurant with a flamenco guitarist. The idea of curating the entire city is fascinating, and Kingston is ripe for it.”
Performances at San Severia spiegeltent, Thursdays-Saturdays, July-August, 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m.; $8; yoga classes, Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m.; Broadway between Henry & Cedar Streets, Midtown Kingston; [email protected] or https://www.facebook.com/KingstonFestival.
